


You Wear A Thin Disguise

by smirkovskiy (orphan_account)



Category: Dancing with the Stars (US) RPF, Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Future Fic, Implied Relationships, Light Angst, Moving On, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/smirkovskiy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maks wants to get married.  Meryl just isn’t sure the timing is right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Wear A Thin Disguise

**Author's Note:**

> So, this happened. A million thank yous to [kerleesha](http://kerleesha.tumblr.com) for looking this over for me! Any remaining mistakes are my fault because I suck.
> 
> I don’t think Charlie and Tanith actually have a cabin in Tahoe.
> 
> If slightly angsty Meryl/Maks upsets you, you should probably stop reading now.
> 
> Translations of the Russian phrases used can be found at the end of the work. I'm pretty sure they're accurate, but if they're not, please let me know.

_It's from yourself you hide._  
— “Truth,” Handsome Boy Modeling School

Maks takes her hand in his and asks her to marry him on a sunny summer day.

They’re lying together in the hammock out back, behind the summer cottage Meryl bought with some of her savings after the Olympics and _Dancing With the Stars_. It had been her first real, big purchase, and she was proud of it. She had fixed it all up herself, with a little help from her dad, her brother, Charlie.

Maks wraps a big, warm hand around one of Meryl’s, rubbing his cheek against her bare shoulder.

“Meryl,” he says, squeezing on her fingers a little bit, and she notices his palm is damp with sweat. “Меришка.”

He almost never calls her that. He only uses it when he’s feeling sentimental or when he’s drunk, or both.

“Yeah?” Meryl lightly traces her fingertips over the back of his bronzed hand. They haven’t had many quiet, peaceful moments like this lately, just the two of them. It feels nice to relax, relearn one another after spending so long apart.

Maks shifts behind her, hammock dipping, his hips bumping against her ass, and she wonders for a moment if getting into the hammock has just been a ruse to have sex. She’s about to fire off a snarky retort, but he tightens his hand around hers again.

Maks slips out of the hammock unceremoniously. Meryl can’t help but laugh at him as he sprawls out in the grass rather dramatically, getting blades of grass all over his white linen slacks.

Maks rolls onto his stomach and pulls himself onto his knees, sliding a hand into his pocket. “Меришка, I love you,” he says, staring at her so earnestly, his dark eyes burning into the center of her chest.

Meryl presses a hand over her heart. “I love you too,” she says, smiling fondly.

“I love you so much, ты мой ангел,” he says, and his voice trembles ever so slightly. “I am so, so lucky you have come into my life. I can’t—I don’t want to imagine my life without you in it. _Ever_.”

Meryl feels her heart start pounding in her chest. She can feel a thin sheen of sweat mist her skin. “Maks, I—”

“Will you marry me? Will you complete my life?” Maks pulls his hand out of his pocket and holds out a beautiful diamond ring. His hand shakes and Meryl worries for a moment that the ring will slip from his fingers and land in the soft grass below.

Meryl stares at him, at the ring, and reaches back to twist her fingers into the damp hair at the nape of her neck. Her heart twists in her chest, and she aches. Meryl has a sneaking suspicion this isn’t the reaction she’s supposed to be having, that she’s supposed to be happier, that she should have flown into his arms and slipped the ring on her finger by now.

They’ve been together—officially, publicly together—for almost a year, and yet this all seems so whirlwind-fast. Charlie and Tanith, who had wed the previous summer, dated for more than half a decade before he finally put a ring on her finger, and then waited another year before walking down the aisle.

Maks is still staring up at her, eyes watery, mouth twitching into a nervous smile. Meryl can’t bear to leave him hanging any longer. She does love him, she does. So she kneels in the grass in front of him and cups his face in her hands.

“I—I don’t know,” she whispers. 

It’s not what she’d intended to say. It was supposed to go something more like: I would _love_ to be your wife. 

“It feels so fast. Doesn’t it feel fast to you?”

Maks’ face falls for a moment before he forces a tight smile that pinches his eyes at the corners. “I don’t understand.”

“I thought we’d have more time, you know? More time to—to get to know each other.”

“We’ve been together more than a year,” he says, sounding petulant now, like a child that’s been scolded after getting his hand caught in the cookie jar. “I know you love me. You know I love you. What’s the problem?”

Meryl closes her eyes and sighs. “I—I—there’s no _problem_. And you’re right, I do love you. It’s just—the timing doesn’t feel right.”

Maks sighs and Meryl hears the rustle of fabric. When she opens her eyes, she sees him slipping the glittering diamond ring back into his pocket. “I won’t stop trying,” he informs her, reaching out and tipping her head up. He leans in and kisses her lightly on the forehead.

Meryl sighs and loops her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” Maks kisses her again, on the lips this time. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I can’t help it,” she sighs, resting her forehead on his shoulder.

She feels his fingers slip under the thin straps of her tank top, but he doesn’t move to slip them off her shoulders. He just leaves his fingers there against her bare skin.

“I know. Я люблю тебя. Я буду ждать тебя вечно.”

Meryl squeezes her eyes shut hard, tightening her arms around his neck. Her heart throbs painfully in her chest. She’s learned enough Russian to know what that means. 

_I love you. I’ll wait for you forever._

She doesn’t deserve him, she doesn’t deserve his love. 

He deserves someone who isn’t afraid.

-

Maks tries again that winter, while everyone is gathered together at Charlie and Tanith’s cabin in Tahoe for the holidays. 

Tanith had set up a big fir tree with little felt snowmen and Hanukkah menorahs made from silver tinsel pipe cleaner. Under the tree are stacks and stacks of presents, mostly gifts for her and Charlie’s unborn baby.

Meryl leans against the couch and watches as Val and Charlie fence with toy lightsabers in front of a picture window. They dance back and forth across the smooth, polished floor, the clacking of the plastic blades giving her a headache.

Charlie makes a show of stabbing Val in the chest, and then he throws his arms up in the air victoriously and whoops. Val dies dramatically on the hardwood floor, limbs twitching, eyes rolling back in his skull. Charlie pokes at Val’s prone form with the tip of his lightsaber while Meryl clutches her hands in front of her, wishing she had a drink to distract them.

Jenna squeals shrilly, tearing Meryl’s attention away from Charlie momentarily, as she runs over to Val and throws herself over him. She throttles him by the shoulders hard enough that that silly porkpie hat falls off his head and rolls across the floor. “Come back to me, Valentin! Speak to me!”

Charlie stands over them, leaning on his lightsaber like it’s a cane, and laughs maniacally.

Meryl pushes herself away from the couch and turns to seek out Maks. Someone slips in behind her, hand finding her hip, and brushes a kiss against the back of her neck.

“Looking for someone?” Maks presses tiny kisses behind her ear.

“Just some guy I know,” Meryl says, reaching back and rubbing a hand over his arm.

“Don’t be too upset,” he murmurs. “Val lost a lot of blood but he’ll be fine.”

Meryl laughs and pulls his arm around her waist. “Good to hear.”

“I want to give you your present early. Come with me.” Maks wraps his hand around Meryl’s wrist and tugs her after him, toward the hall.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Meryl asks.

“Giving you your present. Now come.” 

Meryl lets Maks pull her into the first empty room down the hall. She raises an eyebrow at him when he shuts the door gently behind them and flips on the light.

“Maks, I’m not going to have sex with you in Charlie and Tanith’s guest—”

“No, that’s not what... _No_ ,” Maks says, shaking his head at her and laughing.

“Then what—” Meryl stops herself short when Maks drops to a knee in front of her and rubs his hands up her legs, up her thighs, to her hips. He grasps her by the waist and looks up at her, his dark eyes shining and full of love. “Maks... C’mon, get up. You’re gonna get your clothes dirty.”

“Меришка, stop distracting me,” he says, squeezing her. “I have some things I have to say.”

“I—okay.” Meryl clamps her lips shut and digs her teeth into the inside of her cheek. She knows—deep down inside—what he’s going to say, what he’s going to ask of her.

“I know you still think the timing isn’t right. I’m not asking you to say yes this instant. I’m asking you... Can you ever see yourself married to me? If you don’t, I won’t ask again. I’ll still love you forever, but I won’t ask again.” Maks reaches into his pocket and pulls a ring— _the_ ring—out, holding it up to her.

Meryl stares down at it, the glinting diamond, the flash of the silver band as he twists the ring between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Oh, Maks,” she sighs. There must be something in her tone because he closes his eyes and sighs too, hand drooping ever so slightly. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I—I think I _could_. I think I could see myself marrying you.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” he concludes, sounding gloomy, resigned.

“It’s—it’s like you said. The timing just—”

“Is it Charlie?” Maks suddenly blurts, turning his eyes back on her. The look—she’d never expected him to look at her like _that_ , like she’d broken him—staggers her, sends her reeling back just a bit.

“What? Of course not!” Meryl insists, clenching her hands in fists at her sides.

“You were partners for more than half your life,” Maks says, stuffing the ring back in his pocket. “There wasn’t a little part of you that wanted it to be more? There isn’t a little part of you now that’s holding you back?”

“No,” Meryl says, in a fierce whisper. “No. _Never_.”

Maks gets onto his feet with a weary groan. “I don’t—I don’t think I believe that.”

“What are you saying then?” Meryl asks. She hates how she sounds, so tremulous, so frightened. What is she so afraid of? That Maks will leave her?

“I think... most of you is with me, but there is a part of you with Charlie,” Maks says, slowly, deliberately. “I think I’ve always known that.”

“Maks, you know I love you,” she says, touching his hand.

Maks turns his hand, catching her fingers in his. “I know. I don’t know what to do.”

Meryl squeezes his hand. She can hear faint, tinkly Christmas music just beyond the closed door. She stares out the bedroom window, at the snow drifting down in wintry tufts, sparkling like millions of minuscule diamonds. 

“Me either,” she whispers, tightening her fingers around his.

-

After everyone else has gone to sleep, Meryl wraps herself up in Maks’ warm, downy winter coat and parks herself in front of the crackling fireplace. She sighs, tightening the coat around her, and wishes—actually, she’s not sure what she’s wishing for right now. 

She’d known, even way back when, that she loved Charlie. She just hadn’t ever been brave enough to give voice to it, to make it true. The timing had never been right for her to say anything. 

Now it never will be. And she isn’t supposed to be so upset about that.

Charlie’s happy, and he and Tanith are starting a _family_ together. Meryl will be happy for them if it kills her.

“Братишка, what are you—”

Meryl spins around, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Val stands in the doorway, an empty glass clutched in one of his hands and his cell phone dangling from the other.

“Val? What’s up,” she asks, forcing an incongruously cheery smile onto her face.

“Meryl, sorry, I thought you were...” Val trails off as he gets a good look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Meryl says hastily, _too_ hastily.

“You’re crying,” Val says, the joy and buoyancy sliding right out of his voice. He comes over to her and crouches down beside her. “Are you okay? Did you and Maks have a fight?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” Meryl insists, turning back to face the fireplace.

Val settles next to her on the floor, folding his legs into a pretzel, and rests his arms over his knees. “Are you sure?”

Meryl glances at him. “Maks asked me to marry him,” she says, lowering her gaze to the floor. She flicks a fingernail at the woodgrain of the hardwood floor underneath them.

“I know,” Val says. “He told me.”

“He told you?” Meryl can’t keep the horror from seeping into her voice.

“He tells me everything,” Val says, shrugging, as if it’s not a big deal. As if it’s not a big deal that the love of his brother’s life has turned his marriage proposal down for a second time.

“You must hate me now,” she says, turning away.

Val sighs beside her. “I don’t hate you. I don’t _understand_ , but I don’t hate you,” he says.

“I love him,” Meryl says, twisting her hands in her lap. “I think I could see myself being married to him. Starting a family with him.” She laughs, a sharp, discordant sound that makes her wince.

“But you don’t know what you want?” Val suggests.

Meryl rubs her thumb between her eyes, over the bridge of her nose. “I—I do. I want Maks. I want a life with Maks,” she says firmly.

“But...?” Val prompts.

Meryl drops her head in her hands, the coat slipping from her shoulders. “I just can’t shake this feeling that I’m always going to wonder if... If...” Her voice dies in her throat, and she feels Val’s hand land between her shoulder blades, rubbing gently. She shudders under his touch and shies away, pulling the thick, warm coat back around her.

“If he loves you and you love him, that should be enough,” Val says, sounding distant and thoughtful, hand squeezing on her shoulder, “but sometimes it’s not. You should figure out if it’s enough.”

Meryl looks down at her hands, which are curled in the sleeves of Maks’ oversized winter coat. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Val says, looping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in close to press his lips against her temple. He gives her a light squeeze before letting go and heading off to bed.

Meryl stays there, wrapped in Maks’ coat, and watches the flames dance behind wrought iron grate until she thinks she’ll see them in her sleep.

After shrugging off Maks’ coat and hanging it up on the coatrack in the foyer, Meryl goes to the bedroom she’s sharing with him. He’s sprawled out in bed, taking up the entire mattress, still fully clothed, right down to the shoes on his feet. 

Meryl laughs under her breath and crawls into bed with him, suddenly too tired to brush her teeth or change into her pajamas. She settles in tight against his side and Maks shifts and turns in his sleep a little bit, his hand finding its way to her waist.

Meryl tucks her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes, lacing her fingers with his on her waist. Maks murmurs a jumble of indecipherable Russian against her cheek before stilling next to her, his breaths evening out.

It’s times like this she can actually picture herself marrying him.

She feels like she’s on a game show, and Maks is the prize. 

_All this can be yours, if the price is right._

-

Meryl and Maks drive to the airport the following morning in relative silence, snow falling all around them. Meryl tilts her head up and looks at the snow battering against the tinted sunroof of their rental, lost in her own winter wonderland. Right now, with Maks by her side, a trunk full of Christmas and Hanukkah presents, and the open road sprawled out ahead of them, everything is perfect.

Maks drives with one hand on the steering wheel and the other fiddling with the radio dials. Meryl gently whacks his hand away and directs it back to the steering wheel.

“That’s how car accidents happen,” she scolds teasingly. Maks doesn’t look at her but she can tell he’s rolling his eyes. “Don’t give me that, mister.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Maks replies, but he keeps both hands on the steering wheel. Meryl spies the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

“No, I’m not,” she agrees, reaching out and running a hand over his shoulder.

Maks tilts his head a little, rubbing his stubbled cheek against the back of her hand for a moment. 

“Thank God for that,” Maks says, with a put-upon sigh.

Meryl laughs softly and folds her hands in her lap. She looks down, twists the ring on her right ring finger, the one she’s worn most of her life. 

“So, I was thinking about last night...”

“Oh?” Maks tries not to look too interested.

“I’m not ready to get married,” she says, as she continues to twist the ring on her finger. “You were right. I was holding a part of myself back, and it’s not fair to either of us.”

“So what are you saying?” Maks asks, hands tightening, knuckles going white.

“I—I’m saying I need time to...” Meryl pauses, wondering how best to word this. “I need time to mourn.”

“Charlie.” Maks sighs. He breathes in deeply, lets it go.

“Yeah,” Meryl says, looking away. She rubs at the corner of her eye with her thumb.

“You’re in love with him?” Maks asks, his voice trembling just a bit.

“Not—not anymore, not like that,” Meryl says, rubbing at her chest, at the tightness that forms there like icicles around her heart. “I was for a long time. I thought he was the only one I’d ever have a chance at a future with. It’s just—it’s hard letting go of that old dream. It’s _hard_.”

“It is.” Maks reaches out and squeezes her knee.

Meryl laces her fingers with Maks’ and pulls his hand against her chest, over her pounding heartbeat. “We’ll be okay,” she says softly, bending her head and pressing a kiss to the back of his hand.  

She lets go of his hand and wipes the tears off her cheeks. 

“We’ll be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Меришка = Meryshka (I don't know if this would be a proper nickname for Meryl but I went with it)  
> ты мой ангел = You're my angel  
> Братишка = Brother/bro
> 
> ...
> 
> This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect reality. This story is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this while googling for yourself, click the back button now.


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